Arciniaga, Eggleston Run Strong in Boston

Nick Arciniaga celebrated his new sponsorship with Under Armour with a seventh-place finish in the 2014 Boston Marathon. He wore Under Armour SpeedForm RC running shoes in the race. Photo: Brian Metzler/Competitor.com

Other Americans ran well on Monday in Boston.

Behind the big story of Meb Keflezighi’s historic win at the 118th Boston Marathon were successes by several other Americans.

Nick Arciniaga and Jeff Eggleston ran together for much of the race, and finished seventh and eighth in 2:11:47 and 2:11:57, respectively.

“I felt great during the race,” said Arciniaga, who set his PR of 2:11:30 in Boston in 2011. “I was smiling and having a good time.” Indeed, he, Eggleston and Ryan Hall were content to ride along with a pack of some two dozen runners, including most of the pre-race East African favorites, as Keflezighi and Josphat Boit ran on ahead, unchallenged.

“I was surprised we were just going along running 4:50s, that no one went off after Meb,” said Arciniaga, 30, who won the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon last October. “But if they weren’t going to chase, we certainly weren’t going to pull them up to Meb and JB.”

Eventually some sort of chase effort took shape around 20K, but it was short-lived and unsuccessful. “They got away, but we caught most of them by halfway,” Arciniaga said. “Going up the hills we were catching guys every mile, and they didn’t seem to put up any kind of fight.”

Eggleston, the top American finisher at the 2013 IAAF World Championships marathon in Moscow, lowered his PR from Chicago 2012 by 5 seconds, but felt getting under the 2:12 barrier was important.

“Up until last year I’ve kind of been a journeyman marathoner, running four or five a year. For New York and this race, I dedicated four or five months of specific training, trying to follow the lifestyle of a professional runner.”

The 29-year-old Eggleston, based in Boulder, Colo., adds his own twist to that: He’s self-coached and doesn’t train with a group, doing most of his workouts paced by his girlfriend on her bike.

“That seems to work for me,” he said. Both runners plan to race on the domestic road circuit this summer before running fall marathons, Arciniaga tossing in a run at Grandma’s Marathon in two months before defending his TCM title. “I seem to run well in Minnesota, so I’ll keep going back there.” “I think I’m making steady progress,” says Eggleston. “I think Nick and I can be right there in the mix for the marathon Trials in 2016.”

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